Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.
How do the films we watch as children affect our taste as adults? And what if we don’t really watch children’s films when we’re growing up, but instead our parents take us to see Amadeus or The Last Emperor? Matt has a thought or two on these questions.
He also has some thoughts on the latest instalment in the Indiana Jones series – which takes the shape of a video game rather than a film, and which finds great ways of translating the idiosyncrasies of the Indy movies into a different medium.
And what else do we have on offer in terms of trailers?
Matt: From a series of films adapted into a sequel game to a film that’s based on a video game: Exit 8. The trailer looks effectively creepy – and I’m not sure whether the very game-like structure of the story is a problem or an asset in this case. But it’s weird that games like this one, which have the player do little else than walk around in circles and trying to figure out whether there’s something anomalous about their environment, have become something of a hit in recent years. Might it be that more and more people feel like they’re basically walking around in circles as the world around them gets stranger and stranger?
Matt: Finally, there’s this trailer for a re-release of 1960s classic The Graduate. This is one of those films I’ve only seen on TV, so I’d love a chance to see it on a big screen – but I’m not sure they’re doing themselves a favour with a trailer this generic. The music sounds like they asked an AI to come up with tunes faintly reminiscent of the music in the film (and the AI failed miserably), and the editing doesn’t do anything for this either. If this is what all those ‘modern trailers’ for older films on YouTube are like, then I know why I never click on them.
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 